Lane Kiffin’s LSU tenure will probably end terribly, too

• College Football

From Oakland to Knoxville to Oxford, a Lane Kiffin tenure always ends in drama and plenty of pissed off people.

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Chances are, most people’s first core memory of Lane Kiffin isn’t him being a successful offensive assistant for USC during its mid-2000’s dynasty run. It’s not even necessarily him being inexplicably hired by the Oakland Raiders to be their new head coach in 2007 at just 31-years-old.

Kiffin was fired just four games into the 2008 season after a rough 5-15 stint with the organization. It wasn’t really out of the ordinary as several NFL coaches have seen their doomed tenures meet a quick end, and he certainly didn’t do himself any favors when he sent Sebastian Janikowski out to attempt a 76-yard field goal just a few days before his dismissal. But what was out of the ordinary was Raiders owner Al Davis holding a near hour-long press conference where he made Kiffin’s name famous (or infamous) by burying him in front of a projector. The now-late legendary executive hammered out all of the reasons for the firing, most notably calling him a “professional liar” and stating that the young coach had disgraced the organization.

Now, this bizarre scene happened in the middle of what would be a sixth straight losing season for the Raiders. The national perception of the 79-year-old Davis at the time was that of an out-of-touch old man that was tarnishing his own legacy and that presser only added on to that sentiment. Davis’ words turned out to be prescient, as nearly two decades later he’s seemingly vindicated from beyond the grave every time Kiffin’s tenure in a particular spot comes to a controversial, messy end.

The now 50-year-old Kiffin is leaving Ole Miss for hated SEC rival LSU, ending a multi-week drama that has consumed the college football world throughout the final weeks of the 2025 regular season. This isn’t the first time that he has had dalliance with a league rival while in Oxford. He nearly accepted the head coaching vacancy at Auburn three years ago before deciding to stay at Mississippi at the last minute.

But what makes his courtship with LSU particularly galling is the fact that he is actively abandoning an Ole Miss team that is still in contention for a national championship. The Rebels won 11 games in the regular season for the first time in program history and even though they missed out on an SEC Championship Game appearance, they are a virtual lock for the College Football Playoff where they will most likely host a first-round game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

And despite all of this staring him right in the face, he managed to make a complete mess while reveling in the spotlight. Weeks of skirting questions about his future in Oxford coincided with him publicly sending family members to visit both Baton Rouge and Gainesville. The drama surrounding his decision overshadowed Ole Miss’ showdown with rival Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl last week, and even as his eventual departure to LSU became apparent, his insistence on being able to still coach the team in the postseason became a major sticking point. He reportedly threatened to poach Ole Miss assistants and players if his demands weren’t met and Sunday saw him finally kiss Oxford goodbye while defensive coordinator Pete Golding was elevated to permanent head coach for the postseason and beyond.

Kiffin was undeniably the best head coach in the post-integration era of Ole Miss football and could’ve solidified a legacy on par with program legend Johnny Vaught. Instead, he departed Oxford on Sunday afternoon in a cloud of controversy of his own doing and Rebel fans made sure to send him off with one finger salutes at the airport.

This entire situation is reminiscent of a saga earlier in his coaching career, when he awkwardly left Tennessee for USC after just one season, prompting a mini-student riot in Knoxville. Given the timing of the move in January, the Vols had to settle on Derek Dooley as a replacement, setting off a decade of futility for the program. The coach was not able to elevate USC back to national prominence and after three-and-a-half years in Los Angeles, the Trojan brass grew tired of his middling results and immaturity, notoriously firing him on the tarmac of LAX after a road loss at Arizona State.

Even his stint as Alabama’s offensive coordinator ended controversially as he was fired just one week before the Crimson Tide’s appearance in the 2017 national championship game against Clemson. Kiffin’s stint in the proverbial “Nick Saban school for wayward coaches” earned him the head coaching job at Florida Atlantic and he was allowed to continue his OC duties during the postseason. However, his tardiness to staff meetings and media appearances indicated that he was too preoccupied by his future job instead of his current one, prompting Saban to send him on his way to Boca Raton a week early.

Even the aforementioned flirtation with Auburn created a distraction that doomed Ole Miss’ season, as the Rebels lost four of their last five games in the regular season after a 7-0 start. Conventional wisdom indicated that Kiffin would put the school in this position at some point yet again and lo and behold, it’s a bigger mess than we could’ve imagined. The grand irony is that just this year, the coach and ESPN partnered in a bit of image rehab with the E60 special “The Many Lives of Lane Kiffin”, showcasing his apparent growth from and maturity from all of those past incidents. Well, so much for that.

Make no mistake, Kiffin is one of the best offensive minds in college football and *should* find great success at LSU. He’ll get the fans and power brokers in Baton Rouge hyped up in Monday’s intro press conference with some jokes and maybe a jab or two at other SEC rivals (maybe even Ole Miss). He’ll activate the NIL apparatus to assemble elite rosters like he did in Oxford. He’ll have an active presence on social media with plenty of trolling and he’ll even come up with a catchy phrase like #ComeToTheBoot or something. He’ll bring in longtime friends like Ed Orgeron on staff to recruit and develop players into NFL-ready prospects. And he may even bring home a national title like three out of four of his predecessors in Baton Rouge have done.

And make no mistake, it will all end terribly. That’s the deal that you make when you invite Kiffin into your ranks and even the most diehard Tiger fans have to be bracing for the day when it all starts coming apart at their expense. Maybe Al Davis could see into the future.

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